1980 Burlington car wash killer to be paroled in 2022

Wednesday

Larry Junious Booker Jr., 58, has won parole in 2022 by which time it will be more than 41 years since he murderd a car wash attendant in Burlington in an armed robbery.

Booker has been eligible to apply for parole since 1990, and he was paroled in late 2005, but absconded from supervision, according to the Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission, on June 4, 2008. He was arrested out of state and returned to North Carolina July 3, 2008.

Louis H. Shoe, a 67-year-old part-time employee at the Robo Car Wash at 2417 N. Church St., Burlington, was found face down in a supply room at the car wash just before noon Monday, July 21, 1980 shot five times in his back and side. Booker, a 19-year-old U.S. Army deserter, was charged with murder and armed robbery that night.

The North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission announced this week his new parole date will be March 15, 2022.

Structured sentencing did away with parole in North Carolina for crimes committed after Oct. 1, 1994, but those convicted before that policy, like Booker, are still eligible.

The day of the murder, witness descriptions of the robber’s car led police to Booker’s home at Morningside Apartments by 12:45 p.m. where they found the murder weapon, a .25-caliber pistol, and about $58 investigators believed Booker took from Shoe’s body. Police had a taped confession by 5:10 p.m., which Booker later recanted.

Booker was tried that October, but the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. A juror told the Times-News the deadlock was along racial lines.

A jury convicted Booker of first-degree murder and armed robbery six months after the murder in January of 1981 after 70 minutes of deliberation, and he was sentenced to life in prison. During the sentencing phase of the trial to decide whether Booker would face a life or death sentence, his parents testified to the chaotic conditions of his childhood home including a time he saw his father shoot and wound his mother.

Two psychiatrists testified about Booker’s emotional dependence on his mother and one even theorized he might have killed Shoe so he would have to stay in the area rather than go back to Washington State with the Army.

Prosecutors, however, had Booker’s confession in which he said he didn’t believe Shoe when he said he wouldn’t report him, had him turn around, shot Shoe in the back after the man asked to be spared, walked out of the room, then returned and emptied the pistol into Shoe's body while he struggled to get back to his feet.

At trial, Booker’s lawyer argued the confession was coerced in a five-hour interrogation in which police threatened him with the gas chamber and harassed Booker. Booker testified that he had been at the car wash, but a friend who had been with him actually shot Shoe. That man denied it.

A year and a half later, Booker was back in court after the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled his confession may have been inadmissible. The high court ordered a new pretrial hearing saying the trial judge hadn’t made sufficient findings that the confession was admissible.

A judge found the confession admissible in August of 1982 after a day of testimony, and the Supreme Court upheld the conviction Oct. 27, 1983, according to court records.

Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.

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